Being caught after a
nice* lead fall does wonders to develop a mutual feeling of intimacy
with a new climbing partner (who got yanked around at the other end of the
rope). This is part of why I'm particular about
who I climb with: climb enough and an intimacy will develop,
and better for that to happen with people you like having in your life.

* where "nice" means no one got hurt,
but you fell far enough to make it interesting

I've been following Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation with
interest. (understatement)

I hadn't yet written about it here because bloggers (even some
whose writing I normally like) have been speculating up the wazoo.
I thought the web didn't need yet another armchair prosecutor.

But now we know what charges Libby faces. I was struck by several things
Fitzgerald said at his press conference today. When asked about a
possible Republican strategy to spin the charges as being mere
technicalities, he answered

I'll be blunt.

That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national
security investigation, if you're trying to find out who
compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before
a grand jury and if the charges are proven--because remember
there's a presumption of innocence--but if it is proven
that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a
federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and
fabricated a story about how he learned this information,
how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice,
perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very,
very serious matter.

And I'd say this: I think people might not understand this.
We, as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false
statements, obstruction of justice and perjury all the time.
The Department of Justice charges those statutes all the time.

When I was in New York working as a prosecutor, we brought those
cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our
judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole
process is lost.

Hear, hear.
Some people are disappointed that there was no charge for outing Plame
and that Rove hasn't been charged (yet). But give it time.
My guess is that after all this has played out, we'll be
able to say that October 28 was a good day for justice.

Fitzgerald also said

But at the end of the day, I think I want to say one more
thing, which is: When you do a criminal case, if you find
a violation, it doesn't really, in the end, matter what
statute you use if you vindicate the interest.

If Mr. Libby is proven to have done what we've alleged--convicting him
of obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements--very serious
felonies--will vindicate the interest of the public in making sure
he's held accountable.

It's not as if you say, well, this person was convicted but under
the wrong statute.

If you've ever wondered why I live out in the desert:
one reason is that the sky is dark enough to let me see
the Andromeda galaxy (in less detail than shown above, heh)
and the Milky Way when walking outside at night.

A few days ago, I was organizing some junk in my house and came across
an old expired membership card for a bathhouse (the Watergarden in San Jose).
I idly set the card on my desk. (It belonged either in the garbage or in
a filing cabinet; my organizational habits leave something to be desired.)

A day or two later, I got email out of the blue from someone who likes my
name because it appears
in dialogue
in the movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. He wanted
to know if I could send him something with my name on it,
"i.e. expired health club ID or something," adding that "I am aware
this is a very strange request, and will understand your refusal."
So that I would understand how much this meant to him, he referred me to
a personal web page where he uses my name as part of his online handle.

Now, I've never seen Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, but I understand
the appeal of referring to favorite lines from movies and shows.
I sent the gentleman a kit with a bunch of stuff bearing my
name (but not the Watergarden ID card).

I'd
mentioned yesterday that
I might soon be taking antiviral drugs in cheap generic versions. The drugs
in question are cheap because the manufacturer, Cipla, benefits from
patent laws in India which--despite having been stiffened somewhat--are
still less strict than laws in the USA and many other countries.

Cipla's chairman Yusuf Hamied has been called a pirate and a thief
(and probably other more scurrilous names) by large pharmaceutical
companies whose drugs he copies. Dr. Hamied doesn't care; one gets
the impression he thinks the mainstream global drug business (with its
power to lobby governments) is corrupt. In
a 2003
interview, he said

At the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting at Dohar in 2001 it was
proposed that each country could decide for themselves if they had a
national health crisis and could import cheap generic drugs if they
needed them. But the Americans said no. So they put it to the vote
and 143 countries voted in favour and just one, the USA, voted
against. And guess who won? The USA.

Dr. Hamied has
been in
the news this week because Cipla is making a generic version
of a drug used to treat bird flu. The man is blithe;
he seems to take a certain delight in thumbing his nose at his company's
giant competitors. If you have 46 seconds to spare,
listen to him put a BBC interviewer in her place.

Oct.
17 (Bloomberg) -- Serono SA agreed to pay $704 million,
the third-largest health fraud settlement in U.S. history, and
plead guilty to criminal charges over the promotion of its drug
Serostim, used to fight physical wasting caused by AIDS.
[...]
Serono agreed to plead guilty to offering physicians an
all-expense-paid trip to a medical conference in Cannes, France,
in return for writing as many as 30 new prescriptions apiece for Serostim.

Not all drug marketing tactics are illegal, but many are questionable.

I once saw three (3) pharmaceutical company reps in a doctor's
office in San Francisco, waiting in line to pitch their products.
A fourth rep came in the door while I was there. Ultimately,
we patients end up paying for all the marketing.

The way business works nowadays,
Adam Smith's invisible
hand isn't necessarily giving us the most effective products, but
rather the most effectively marketed ones.

The economics of pharmaceuticals are on my mind because I'm probably
about to be a consumer of antivirals.
After 18 years of being HIV+ and doing OK without taking the drugs,
I'm now no
longer managing so well. If I'm lucky, my body will tolerate
a drug regimen that's available as
a cheap
generic. We'll see.

That's not to say I think there's never a time for a white lie or for
cunning--but I prefer that deceit be a last resort, not a habit.

I also want to say that I'm well aware of difficulties associated
with the very concept of truth: the inadequacy of language, the
subjectivity of perception and values, and so on. And I am aware
that questions of language and meaning are of more than just
theoretical or abstract interest; they bear on the application of
law, for example. But that doesn't mean we should just give up
on law or honesty.

That's hardly an exhaustive treatment of the notion of truth--but I'll
leave it at that. And now, an even less thorough treatment of
the pros and cons of clarity:

Clarity has its place.
Mystery can be cool too.

And--apropos of nothing--a label on a t-shirt I bought this week:

OK, I do wash my white clothes separately, but who are they kidding
with this "wash warm with like colors only" shit. Like I'm
really gonna do a green wash, a purple wash, an ecru wash, and so on.

I spent much of the past week making a table-cum-chessboard.
I'm glad I don't do woodworking too often, for a whole bunch of
reasons--not the least of which is how one false move with a table
saw could shred your fingers before you'd even know it happened.
(As opposed to falling while rock climbing, where you have a
moment to reflect upon what's about to happen to you.)

I made the table in New York and brought it back on the plane
as checked baggage. In my experience, airport security personnel can
and will do a ham-handed job, no matter how much work you put
into making a package that's easy for them to open. To take
a 26" square tabletop on the plane this time, I made a crate that could
be opened without any tools. It arrived with a screw out that could've
been left untouched. Oh well; at least it arrived.

Sign in a restroom in a convenience store in California City:

please do not throw seat cover in the toilet and make sure you flush it

"Since the day we discovered [distant planet] Xena, the big question has
been whether or not it has a moon," says [Caltech professor Michael E.] Brown.
"Having a moon is just inherently cool--and it is something that most
self-respecting planets have, so it is good to see that this one does too."
(Tenth
Planet Has a Moon)

Mercury and Venus must feel slighted, especially if two rocks the likes
of Phobos
and Deimos are evidence of Mars being a bona fide "self-respecting" planet.

... it is one thing to say that one consonance is sweeter than
another, another thing to say it is more pleasing. Everyone knows
that honey is sweeter than olives, yet many would prefer to eat
olives, not honey. Thus, everyone knows that the fifth is sweeter
than the fourth, the fourth sweeter than the major third, this in
turn sweeter than the minor third. Yet there are places in which
the minor third is more pleasing than the fifth; others indeed,
where a dissonance is more pleasing than a consonance.